The Schools White Paper contains many notable new policies, from asking primary schools to ensure that 90 per cent of children reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths to requiring a minimum 32.5-hour week in all schools.

On top of that, the paper says the average GCSE grade in English language and maths should rise to 5 by 2030 - up from 4.5 in the last set of exams before the pandemic, in 2019.

Achieving this, the government says, would be “worth £34 billion for the wider economy, for a single cohort in 2030”. 

It’s certainly an attention-grabbing proposal. But for many, it is one that causes confusion - not least because it is based on a statistic that is rarely mentioned and is not a measurement you see in league tables.

Indeed, Dave Thomson, chief statistician at FFT Education Datalab, in a blog about the Schools White Paper, says he was surprised by the decision to use the average grade for English and maths as a new metric of success.

“The GCSE target is somewhat curious, as this is not a measure that has hitherto been included in published key stage 4 statistics,” he writes.

And yet, by 2030, the government says it is this measure that needs to be used to check that children have “the essential tools [for] further training and employment, and to live fulfilled lives”. 

Schools White Paper: Big claims but are there real benefits?

It sounds good as a political statement - but will it really deliver improvements? And can schools really achieve this in just seven academic years?

Dame Alison Peacock, chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, is one of those who are not convinced that setting these new targets will address the issue of academic underachievement.

“The best way to set young people up for success is by strengthening teacher agency and providing schools with the resources to target support where needed,” she says.

“That is how we can tackle the attainment gap, not by introducing arbitrary phase-related targets.”

Andy Byers, headteacher of Framwellgate School Durham, who sits on the advisory board for Schools North East, agrees. He says that without giving them the right resources, expecting schools to magically move averages up by half a point is meaningless. Specifically, he says expecting schools to do this during the middle of a major recruitment crisis that looks set to run and run is blinkered thinking.

“Ultimately, schools need the tools to meet the targets set, and until the right quantity of high-quality teachers are trained and in place, we won’t achieve them,” he explains.

“[The government] will say they have plans for this but they’ve said it before and had 12 years to achieve it. Recruitment is worse than ever.”

How will we know which students are improving?

Even if schools do hit this target, though, Andy Lewis, deputy headteacher at St Bonaventure’s School in East London, says he would question how the sector could know which set of students were driving the improvement.

“I’m just not sure how it will work in practice,” says Lewis. “Yes, with the National Reference Tests, it is, of course, possible that an increase in the average grade would reflect standards going up - but the key question is: how?”

“Do we just expect a shift up in all areas to push up the average, or should the focus be on that cohort at the lower end, for example?”

Byers harbours similar concerns, saying that although he doesn’t “disagree with the aspiration” to improve the average grade, he believes that, as a target, it needs to be “more specific”.

“As it stands, that target could be achieved nationally without any increase in regions, or for key groups of students,” he points out.

Byers and Lewis say that when working with averages of an entire cohort, it’s impossible to draw conclusions about the improved social mobility of disadvantaged groups.

So what would a target look like if it were to address this issue?

Speaking to Tes, Thomson suggests that there could have been an effort to tie in this target with the plans in the Levelling Up White Paper.

“The key stage 2 target includes raising attainment in the worst-performing areas by a third. Perhaps the KS4 target could have had something similar aimed at Education Investment Areas,” he says.

Disrupted cohorts

The government, however, has not suggested that there will be cohort-specific or region-specific elements within this 4.5 to 5-grade push.

Thomson says there is another issue that seems to undermine the plan - the fact that schools will already be on the backfoot trying to hit this target, given that the first cohort to reach the 2030 exams - current Year 3s - “have had two of their early years of schooling disrupted by the pandemic”.

This is a concern shared by Garret Fay, CEO of Insignis Academy Trust, who makes the point that the current graduated approach to the standard deviation of GCSE outcomes “does not support making this a reality at the moment”.

“Comparable outcomes means that [the rise in average GCSE grades] can only happen if KS2 outcomes rise proportionally,” he says.

For students sitting exams in 2030, this will have to mean a rise in KS2 performance in 2025.

As Thomson points out, as those Year 3 pupils have had two years of disruption, is it likely that they’ll recover by 2025 to achieve the KS2 results necessary to hit the target for 2030?

Fay adds that more targets for schools - both at GCSE and primary - will put yet more “strain” on how schools provide for pupils with SEND and vulnerable children.

“Many of them will struggle to reach the government’s ambitions for primary and secondary school students,” he says.

Future mobility should have more focus

On this point, Tom Richmond, founder and director of independent education thinktank EDSK, says if the government’s ultimate goal is to give children “the essential tools [for] further training and employment, and to live fulfilled lives”, then it would have been better off looking to put more focus on what comes after young people have been awarded qualifications.

“If the goal is improving social mobility, it would be better to focus on ensuring that more students in deprived areas move into a positive destination after leaving school or college at age 18,” he argues.

Doing this, he says, would lead to “greater investment in the 16-19 phase and providing high-quality vocational courses from age 14 alongside academic qualifications.”

However, it seems clear that the government is happy instead to simply focus on moving a grade boundary half a point from 4.5 to 5 for two subjects - after all, it claims, this will add £34 billion to the economy.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, fears that yet more focus on English and maths - important as they are - is a ”very narrow view of education” and it risks undermining the importance of other subjects.

“A truly ambitious White Paper should have greater ambition for the whole curriculum,” he says.

It’s a point that Lewis and Fey agree with, voicing their concern that the requrement for schools to play their part in hitting this target will simply mean a further “narrowing of the curriculum” and yet more focus on the accountability metrics on which schools are judged. 

Which isn’t really what anyone wanted from the White Paper.

Grainne Hallahan is senior analyst at Tes. She tweets @heymrshallahan